Women of Substance

If giving the newest generation of workers business training, financial assistance, and personal mentoring are keys to a brighter future—a couple of our South African partners are building their success stories.

Today morning, our delegates got to meet an inspirational South African businesswoman who is committed to creating opportunities for the young ladies here that she never received when she was their age.

Betty Kgomotlokwa Mxekezo Lallie was the representative of a group called “Women of Substance” who 18 years ago came together to build a mentorship program that she was proud to describe to us today.

Betty is one of more than a dozen women who have agreed to take money from their own salaries to pay for school uniforms and classroom supplies for seven young adults each year who they mentor and help with college applications and career search strategies.

Betty and the Women of Substance also host a career fair that is attended by about 1200 students.

Not far down the road, we were able to sit in on another program where classroom training is changing the future for the next generation of students in one of Cape Town’s townships.

The FLY program—Fun Learning for Youth—continues to evolve in Gugulethu because successful professionals are meeting with high school-aged students every Saturday morning to teach advanced math skills.

This program is 15 years old and is directly resulting in many of these 8th through 12th grade students getting into Universities.

This is way many successful young professionals are coming back into the townships with the hopes of training and inspiring these teenagers to develop a whole new view of higher education success.

This is quite a critical program when you consider that during Apartheid it was illegal for black children to be provided anything more than a fourth grade education.

And as one parent of one FLY student once told us—this program has provided she and her son an equation for hope!